DOCSLIB.ORG

Daniel Thomas, “Art Museums in Australia”

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Daniel Thomas, “Art Museums in Australia” ―ART MUSEUMS IN AUSTRALIA: A PERSONAL RETROSPECT”1 by DANIEL THOMAS2 From 1958 to 1990 I worked in art museums — first at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney as a multi-purpose curator, then at the fledgling National Gallery of Australia in Canberra as head of Australian art, and finally at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide as director. The art-museum world that I entered was very British, and rather unaware that it was run largely by artist directors and artist trustees for a small world of artists and collectors. Only the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne produced a good quantity of scholarly art-historical research; only the University of Melbourne then had a department of art history, and thus harboured colleagues for museum-based scholarship. All art-museum buildings were then poorly equipped for anything except collection display. I was the first-ever curator at the National Gallery of New South Wales (which dropped the anachronistic pre-Federation ‗National‘ the year I arrived). Apart from the revised nomenclature we were very backward: the roof leaked and the collections were mediocre compared with the wealthier state galleries in Adelaide and Melbourne, where curators existed and where there were huge private endowments for acquisitions — the 1897 Elder Bequest for South Australia and the 1904 Felton Bequest for Victoria. The state galleries of Western Australia in Perth and Queensland in Brisbane were even more primitive than that in Sydney. In Hobart the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery was, and still is, a multi- disciplinary museum for natural sciences, local history and art. In the second half of the nineteenth century a three-part structure of natural-science museum plus ‗national‘ gallery plus public library had been the format for the major institutions in most Australian colonies except New South Wales. There were small late-nineteenth-century art collections in mining boom cities such as Launceston, Bendigo or Ballarat, and also at Warrnambool and Geelong. After a stagnant early twentieth century for art museums throughout Australia, a professional regional gallery opened in Newcastle in 1957, the first in New South Wales. The University of Melbourne and the Teachers College at Armidale in New South Wales had been given significant art collections, precursors of the art museums now to be found within the many present-day universities. Almost all metropolitan local governments and regional cities throughout Australia now boast art-collecting or art-exhibition spaces. The university or government art museums have been joined recently by a handful of privately-established museums. In 2011 the total number of art institutions throughout Australia was around two hundred. Fifty years ago not even the state galleries had cafés, bookshops, lecture theatres or purpose- built spaces for receptions and entertainments. Above all, they had no purpose-built spaces to handle and display special exhibitions. Membership organisations — then called Art Gallery Societies — had been founded in the nineteen-fifties and they improvised lectures, films, concerts and parties in the collection- 1 This essay was originally commissioned and written in 2008 for a proposed book on museums in Australia to be published by the National Museum of Australia, Canberra. The National Museum will instead publish the commissioned essays in 2011 in a Web book titled Understanding Museums, for which see www.nma.gov.au. In Understanding Museums a shortened version of this essay, updated to 2011, is titled ―Art museums in Australia: a personal view‖. 2 Daniel Thomas AM, Emeritus Director Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, retired in 1990 and now lives in Tasmania. From 1958 he was the curator in charge of Australian art, and later chief curator, at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. From 1978 to 1984 he was the inaugural head of Australian art at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. 1 display spaces. The six state gallery directors — the Australian Gallery Directors Conference — had been conferring regularly since 1948 to plan the touring exhibitions that similarly disrupted their collection displays. The art museums were becoming livelier for visitors but in the process had become rather unsafe places for works of art. A great change occurred in the nineteen-seventies. It was a change from near-total control by government to a healthy proportion of self- reliance. Government-supported museums have always been the norm in Australia. The capital cities of each colony usually sited their public library, museum of natural sciences & anthropology, and a colonial ‗National‘ Gallery together at the city centre, and the three institutions usually shared an overall governing body. Only Victoria and New South Wales established separate museums of technology, then known as ―applied arts & sciences‖. In South Australia the three principal cultural institutions were part of an even more potent urban concentration, further comprising the University of Adelaide, a concert hall, Government House, Parliament House and the main railway station. Today that concentration survives, joined in the late twentieth century by a large performing-arts centre, a casino, five non-collecting contemporary art spaces, a branch of the Flinders University Art Museum inside the State Library, and in 2007 by the University of South Australia‘s Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art. Elsewhere government-supported performing arts also eventually arrived in the capital-city culture zones, and casinos, too, are sometimes nearby. In the nineteen-eighties Queensland undertook a large single development for the four principal cultural agencies — science museum, art museum, library, and performing arts — and established a casino just across the Brisbane River. The state gallery in Adelaide stagnated less than those in the other capitals in the early and mid twentieth century, perhaps because it was the first to have a separate building. The National Gallery of South Australia‘s own building, close to the Public Library in which it previously resided, opened in 1899 and was paid for by the local wool baron Sir Thomas Elder. Elsewhere governments had paid for the buildings, and still contribute a large part of further building costs (and of course for most of the staffing and other operating costs). The National Gallery of Victoria left the well-attended city-centre building it shared with the Public Library and National Museum of Victoria for its own building only in 1968; the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Queensland Art Gallery departed their obscure city- fringe locations for stand-alone art-museum buildings later still, in 1979 and 1982. Large private endowments for buying art, the 1899 Elder Bequest in South Australia and the 1904 Felton Bequest in Victoria, flowed to the two better sited and more powerfully governed art museums in Adelaide and Melbourne. After Elder and Felton other large private endowments for acquisitions continued in South Australia and Victoria but seldom occurred elsewhere until the late twentieth century. Victoria‘s shared rabbit warren of a building was a disadvantage for audiences, if not for patriotic private patronage. Concealed behind a great library, galleries for paintings by Rembrandt and Cézanne were also the way to galleries for skeletons and taxidermy. A confused memory of Kenneth Clark‘s, too often cited from his memoir Another Part of the Wood (1974), falsely tells art history that the stuffed carcase of a beloved Australian racehorse, Phar Lap, was exhibited in the same gallery as works of art. It was not; however, it was visible if you looked out from a picture gallery through an arched exit into the galleries for natural science — a placement, halfway along the galleries for works of art, well- calculated to tempt visitors away from the remaining picture galleries. 2 New South Wales was always different. The Public Library, Museum and National Gallery never shared governance and never shared a site. The Gallery, though close to the centre of Sydney, was situated on a dead-end road in a park. It never had such high-powered boards of trustees as the joint institutions in other colonies/states; perhaps its inconspicuous location and distance from public transport was another disadvantage. In 1968 Melbourne‘s new stand-alone building for the National Gallery of Victoria was palatial and highly conspicuous. It triggered a nationwide upgrade of art-museum buildings, which in turn, especially Sydney‘s in 1972, caused unexpected changes to funding and governance as well as to collecting capabilities and public programmes. Economic prosperity and cultural globalisation had created the momentum. The prior conditions were state and civic pride — and interstate competitiveness. The term Global Village was coined in the ‘sixties not only in regard to media and communications but also to international transport. Australians were now able to travel across the world far more easily and quickly than by ocean liner. Jet aircraft allowed Australia‘s powerbrokers, taking breaks during business or political trips to Europe or America, more often to appreciate the stimulus and glamour of overseas art museums and compare them with the down-at-heel art museums at home in Australia. The rundown Art Gallery of New South Wales in sub-tropical Sydney was a conservation hazard to its collections and, crucially, a discouragement to high-value exhibitions from overseas. Even so, it was less conservation than interstate competition with Victoria and South Australia that caused the New South Wales government to embark in 1969 on the upgrade of its state gallery. The new National Gallery of Victoria had opened in 1968 but ahead of that state-of-the art building in Melbourne the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide had opened a small extension, in 1962, which was Australia‘s first climate- controlled art exhibition space. Both Adelaide and Melbourne have seasons that are kinder to art objects than Sydney‘s summertime steaminess but conservation needs were not the whole story.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Redalyc.Giorgio Morandi and the “Return to Order”: from Pittura
    Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas ISSN: 0185-1276 [email protected] Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas México AGUIRRE, MARIANA Giorgio Morandi and the “Return to Order”: From Pittura Metafisica to Regionalism, 1917- 1928 Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, vol. XXXV, núm. 102, 2013, pp. 93-124 Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas Distrito Federal, México Available in: http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=36928274005 How to cite Complete issue Scientific Information System More information about this article Network of Scientific Journals from Latin America, the Caribbean, Spain and Portugal Journal's homepage in redalyc.org Non-profit academic project, developed under the open access initiative MARIANA AGUIRRE laboratorio sensorial, guadalajara Giorgio Morandi and the “Return to Order”: From Pittura Metafisica to Regionalism, 1917-1928 lthough the art of the Bolognese painter Giorgio Morandi has been showcased in several recent museum exhibitions, impor- tant portions of his trajectory have yet to be analyzed in depth.1 The factA that Morandi’s work has failed to elicit more responses from art historians is the result of the marginalization of modern Italian art from the history of mod- ernism given its reliance on tradition and closeness to Fascism. More impor- tantly, the artist himself favored a formalist interpretation since the late 1930s, which has all but precluded historical approaches to his work except for a few notable exceptions.2 The critic Cesare Brandi, who inaugurated the formalist discourse on Morandi, wrote in 1939 that “nothing is less abstract, less uproot- ed from the world, less indifferent to pain, less deaf to joy than this painting, which apparently retreats to the margins of life and interests itself, withdrawn, in dusty kitchen cupboards.”3 In order to further remove Morandi from the 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Appendices 2011–12
    Art GAllery of New South wAleS appendices 2011–12 Sponsorship 73 Philanthropy and bequests received 73 Art prizes, grants and scholarships 75 Gallery publications for sale 75 Visitor numbers 76 Exhibitions listing 77 Aged and disability access programs and services 78 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander programs and services 79 Multicultural policies and services plan 80 Electronic service delivery 81 Overseas travel 82 Collection – purchases 83 Collection – gifts 85 Collection – loans 88 Staff, volunteers and interns 94 Staff publications, presentations and related activities 96 Customer service delivery 101 Compliance reporting 101 Image details and credits 102 masterpieces from the Musée Grants received SPONSORSHIP National Picasso, Paris During 2011–12 the following funding was received: UBS Contemporary galleries program partner entity Project $ amount VisAsia Council of the Art Sponsors Gallery of New South Wales Nelson Meers foundation Barry Pearce curator emeritus project 75,000 as at 30 June 2012 Asian exhibition program partner CAf America Conservation work The flood in 44,292 the Darling 1890 by wC Piguenit ANZ Principal sponsor: Archibald, Japan foundation Contemporary Asia 2,273 wynne and Sulman Prizes 2012 President’s Council TOTAL 121,565 Avant Card Support sponsor: general Members of the President’s Council as at 30 June 2012 Bank of America Merill Lynch Conservation support for The flood Steven lowy AM, Westfield PHILANTHROPY AC; Kenneth r reed; Charles in the Darling 1890 by wC Piguenit Holdings, President & Denyse
    [Show full text]
  • Just a Feeling Selected Works 1987–2005
    Brent Harris Just a feeling Selected works 1987–2005 i Brent Harris Just a feeling Selected works 1987–2005 Contents 4 Foreword Dr Chris McAuliffe 6 Just a feeling: Brent Harris, selected works 1987–2005 Bala Starr 9 The passion of Brent Harris Sarah Thomas 15 Demonology Jonathan Nichols 19 Singapore paper pulp works James Mollison, AO 24 Plates 34 List of works in the exhibition 40 Brent Harris—biography and bibliography When speaking of Brent Harris’s work, especially his Grotesquerie paintings, there’s a tendency to use words like ‘elegant’, or even ‘decadent’. Those are appropriate enough as descriptive terms; they do capture something of the aesthetic tone of the work. But for the artist himself, different words are required. Words like ‘diligent’ or ‘adventurous’; the very antithesis of the languid and agoraphobic artists of the fin-de-siècle period. Brent Harris is an artist who has often worked programmatically, using a sequence of paintings or prints to systematically hunt down an idea, a form or a quality of his medium. With this persistence comes a willingness to learn, to explore, to renew. What this exhibition amounts to, I think, is a testimony to the hard graft of art. Behind the pristine refinement of the works displayed are accumulated layers not only of studio craft but of reading, reflection, looking and travelling. Surprising new works combine artistic ambition with a willingness to accept the challenge of innovative processes. Familiar works reclaim their subtlety as the resonances threading through an accumulated oeuvre become apparent. The job of being an artist, and the rewards that this offers us as viewers, are both writ large.
    [Show full text]
  • Gestural Abstraction in Australian Art 1947 – 1963: Repositioning the Work of Albert Tucker
    Gestural Abstraction in Australian Art 1947 – 1963: Repositioning the Work of Albert Tucker Volume One Carol Ann Gilchrist A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Art History School of Humanities Faculty of Arts University of Adelaide South Australia October 2015 Thesis Declaration I certify that this work contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma in my name, in any university or other tertiary institution and, to the best of my knowledge and belief, contains no material previously published or written by another person, except where due reference has been made in the text. In addition, I certify that no part of this work will, in the future, be used for any other degree or diploma in any university or other tertiary institution without the prior approval of the University of Adelaide and where applicable, any partner institution responsible for the joint-award of this degree. I give consent to this copy of my thesis, when deposited in the University Library, being made available for loan and photocopying, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I also give permission for the digital version of my thesis to be made available on the web, via the University‟s digital research repository, the Library Search and also through web search engines, unless permission has been granted by the University to restrict access for a period of time. __________________________ __________________________ Abstract Gestural abstraction in the work of Australian painters was little understood and often ignored or misconstrued in the local Australian context during the tendency‟s international high point from 1947-1963.
    [Show full text]
  • Annual Report Contents About Museums Australia Inc
    Museums Australia (Victoria) Melbourne Museum Carlton Gardens, Carlton PO Box 385 Carlton South, Victoria 3053 (03) 8341 7344 Regional Freecall 1800 680 082 www.mavic.asn.au 08 annual report Contents About Museums Australia Inc. (Victoria) About Museums Australia Inc. (Victoria) .................................................................................................. 2 Mission Enabling museums and their Training and Professional Development President’s Report .................................................................................................................................... 3 services, including phone and print-based people to develop their capacity to inspire advice, referrals, workshops and seminars. Treasurer’s Report .................................................................................................................................... 4 Membership and Networking Executive Director’s Report ...................................................................................................................... 5 and engage their communities. to proactively and reactively identify initiatives for the benefit of existing and Management ............................................................................................................................................. 7 potential members and links with the wider museum sector. The weekly Training & Professional Development and Member Events ................................................................... 9 Statement of Purpose MA (Vic) represents
    [Show full text]
  • A 'Common-Sense Revolution'? the Transformation of the Melbourne City
    A ‘COMMON-SENSE REVOLUTION’? THE TRANSFORMATION OF THE MELBOURNE CITY COUNCIL, 1992−9 A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy April, 2015 Angela G. Munro Faculty of Business, Government and Law Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis University of Canberra ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is the culmination of almost fifty years’ interest professionally and as a citizen in local government. Like many Australians, I suspect, I had barely noticed it until I lived in England where I realised what unique attributes it offered, despite the different constitutional arrangements of which it was part. The research question of how the disempowerment and de-democratisation of the Melbourne City Council from 1992−9 was possible was a question with which I had wrestled, in practice, as a citizen during those years. My academic interest was piqued by the Mayor of Stockholm to whom I spoke on November 18, 1993, the day on which the Melbourne City Council was sacked. ‘That couldn’t happen here’, he said. I have found the project a herculean labour, since I recognised the need to go back to 1842 to track the institutional genealogy of the City Council’s development in the pre- history period to 1992 rather than a forensic examination of the seven year study period. I have been exceptionally fortunate to have been supervised by John Halligan, Professor of Public Administration at University of Canberra. An international authority in the field, Professor Halligan has published extensively on Australian systems of government including the capital cities and the Melbourne City Council in particular.
    [Show full text]
  • Letter from Melbourne Is a Monthly Public Affairs Bulletin, a Simple Précis, Distilling and Interpreting Mother Nature
    SavingLETTER you time. A monthly newsletter distilling FROM public policy and government decisionsMELBOURNE which affect business opportunities in Australia and beyond. Saving you time. A monthly newsletter distilling public policy and government decisions which affect business opportunities in Australia and beyond. p11-14: Special Melbourne Opera insert Issue 161 Our New Year Edition 16 December 2010 to 13 January 2011 INSIDE Auditing the state’s affairs Auditor (VAGO) also busy Child care and mental health focus Human rights changes Labor leader no socialist. Myki musings. Decision imminent. Comrie leads Victorian floods Federal health challenge/changes And other big (regional) rail inquiry HealthSmart also in the news challenge Baillieu team appointments New water minister busy Windsor still in the news 16 DECEMBER 2010 to 13 JANUARY 2011 14 Collins Street EDITORIAL Melbourne, 3000 Victoria, Australia Our government warming up. P 03 9654 1300 Even some supporters of the Baillieu government have commented that it is getting off to a slow F 03 9654 1165 start. The fact is that all ministers need a chief of staff and specialist and other advisers in order to [email protected] properly interface with the civil service, as they apply their new policies and different administration www.letterfromcanberra.com.au emphases. These folk have to come from somewhere and the better they are, the longer it can take for them to leave their current employment wherever that might be and settle down into a government office in Melbourne. Editor Alistair Urquhart Some stakeholders in various industries are becoming frustrated, finding it difficult to get the Associate Editor Gabriel Phipps Subscription Manager Camilla Orr-Thomson interaction they need with a relevant minister.
    [Show full text]
  • 2018-Annual-Report.Pdf
    2018 ANNUAL REPORT GROWING TODAY. BUILDING New Fishermans Bend Campus 2022* Southbank Campus Redevelopment 2019* New Student Precinct 2022* THE IDEAS OF Engineering ideas for the 21st century Melbourne’s new creative centre Bringing the campus community together The University is creating a world-class engineering school for the This ambitious $200 million project, including the new Melbourne Co-created with students, the New Student Precinct at Parkville will 21st century, including a new purpose-built engineering campus Conservatorium, brings music and fine arts students together at the provide a place for students to connect, engage and innovate. TOMORROW at Melbourne’s Fishermans Bend – Australia’s newest design and heart of the Melbourne Arts Precinct. It supports the Faculty of Fine Arts This vibrant precinct will bring together student services with study engineering precinct. and Music’s standing as a world-leading arts education institution with spaces, arts and cultural facilities with food and retail outlets; all in close cutting-edge facilities and strong industry links. proximity to the Parkville campus. Science Gallery Melbourne 2020* Old Quadrangle Redevelopment 2019* Western Edge Biosciences Parkville 2019* Werribee Campus Redevelopment 2019* Growing minds in arts and science Reaffirming the heart of the University Where modern facilities meet our living Victoria’s world-class home for veterinary The newest addition to an acclaimed international network with eight Following an extensive restoration and the incorporation of cultural and heritage education and animal treatment nodes worldwide, the landmark Science Gallery Melbourne will be event spaces, the Old Quad will be reaffirmed as the University’s cultural, Bringing three faculties together for the first time, our Western Edge Through a $63 million investment, the University is expanding its embedded in the University of Melbourne ’s new innovation precinct, civic and ceremonial heart.
    [Show full text]
  • THE FAMOUS FACES WHO HELPED INSPIRE a GREAT KNIGHT for the Past 25 Years, GRANT Mcarthur Keating and Malcolm Hewitt Screaming “C’Mon”
    06 NEWS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2015 HERALDSUN.COM.AU ALWAYS MAKING HEADLINES Melbourne legends, stars mark our milestone IT was aptly a headline- NUI TE KOHA, outed him and then-girlfriend a great move and it’s just gone grabbing event celebrating the JACKIE EPSTEIN Holly before they had gone on from strength to strength. I’m 25-year milestone of a news AND LUKE DENNEHY a second date. really honoured to be part of powerhouse. “We hadn’t had that chat,” this celebration ... It’s such a big About 350 prominent Mel- Television legend Newton Hughes said. part of Melbourne.” burnians gathered to honour said: “Melbourne is a great city Holly, a journalist, started Celebrity guests were in a the Herald Sun at a star-stud- but it’s made even better by working at the Herald Sun as a cheeky mood when photogra- ded party at The Emerson in institutions like the Herald Sun. “beautiful 22 year old,” he said. phers tried to get a shot of the South Yarra last night. “I can’t imagine Melbourne “For 10 years, not one editor assembled throng. Powerbrokers, including without it. hit on her. What is going on “(Jeff) Kennett will break Eddie McGuire, Michael Gud- “I’m a Melbourne boy, born there?” Hughes said. the camera,” John Elliott bel- inski, Jeanne Pratt, Robert and bred, and the Herald Sun is He said media mogul Ru- lowed. Doyle and Jeff Kennett, joined one of the important traditions pert Murdoch insisted Colling- Kennett retorted: “The legends, like Ian “Molly” Mel- of living here.” wood”s 1990 premiership win camera will break itself.
    [Show full text]
  • News from the Collections
    News from the collections Grainger Museum reopening Melbourne Conservatorium of The Grainger Museum officially Music; Dr Peter Tregear of Monash re-opened on Friday 15 October, University; and Brian Allison and following a seven-year closure. Astrid Krautschneider, Curators of Over the past few years substantial the Grainger Museum. conservation works were carried out The Grainger Museum is located on the heritage-registered building on Royal Parade, near Gate 13, under the supervision of conservation Parkville Campus. The opening architects Lovell Chen, along with hours are Tuesday to Friday 1pm to improvements to the facilities for 4.30pm and Sunday 1pm to 4.30pm. visitors, collections and staff. The new Closed Monday and Saturday, public suite of exhibitions, curated by the holidays and Christmas through Grainger Museum staff and designed January. Percy’s Café is open 8am to by Lucy Bannyan of Bannyan Wood 5pm, Monday to Friday. For further Design, explore Grainger’s life, times information or to join the mailing list and work. Funding was provided see www.grainger.unimelb.edu.au. by the University, the University Library, the University Annual MacPherson, Ormond Professor of G.W.L. Marshall-Hall: Appeal, bequests and donors. The Music and Director of the Melbourne A symposium guest speaker at the launch was Conservatorium of Music. Professor The collections of the Grainger Professor Malcolm Gillies, Vice- Gillies’ keynote paper ‘Grainger Museum provide an invaluable Chancellor of London Metropolitan 50 years on’ explored Percy Grainger’s research resource that extend far University and a leading Grainger current place in both the world of beyond the life and music of Percy scholar.
    [Show full text]
  • The Blot on the Landscape: Fred Williams and Australian Art History
    The blot on the landscape: Fred Williams and Australian art history Keith Broadfoot There is a blot on the Australian landscape. It has been there for a long time, but its existence only really became apparent with a defining shift in Australian art historiography which occurred with Bernard Smith’s 1980 Boyer Lecture series, The Spectre of Truganini. Seeing the exclusion of an Aboriginal presence in Australian art through the ideas of Sigmund Freud, Smith proposed in his pivotal text that the history of Australian art was a history of repression. After Smith, contemporary art historian Ian McLean has developed the most detailed account of the history of Australian art according to this methodology. This essay examines the work of the modern Australian artist Fred Williams in relation to both Smith and McLean’s understanding of the history of Australian art but to expand on their work I argue that, rather than Freud alone, it is Jacques Lacan’s refiguring of Freud that offers us the most insight into Williams’s work. Further, insofar as I argue that the history of Australian art is the very subject matter of Williams’s work, his work stands in for a wider project, the writing of a history of Australian art according to Lacan’s proposal of a foundational split between the eye and the gaze. But first, to that blot. From colonial melancholy to a modern uncanny In a brilliant observation, Ian McLean, in drawing attention to emigrant artist John Glover’s attempt to control the disorderly dispersion of gums across the hillsides in the background of some of his paintings, suggests that therein could be found the origin to the art of Fred Williams.
    [Show full text]
  • Thesis Title
    Creating a Scene: The Role of Artists’ Groups in the Development of Brisbane’s Art World 1940-1970 Judith Rhylle Hamilton Bachelor of Arts (Hons) University of Queensland Bachelor of Education (Arts and Crafts) Melbourne State College A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at The University of Queensland in 2014 School of English, Media Studies and Art History ii Abstract This study offers an analysis of Brisbane‘s art world through the lens of artists‘ groups operating in the city between 1940 and 1970. It argues that in the absence of more extensive or well-developed art institutions, artists‘ groups played a crucial role in the growth of Brisbane‘s art world. Rather than focusing on an examination of ideas about art or assuming the inherently ‗philistine‘ and ‗provincial‘ nature of Brisbane‘s art world, the thesis examines the nature of the city‘s main art institutions, including facilities for art education, the art market, conservation and collection of art, and writing about art. Compared to the larger Australian cities, these dimensions of the art world remained relatively underdeveloped in Brisbane, and it is in this context that groups such as the Royal Queensland Art Society, the Half Dozen Group of Artists, the Younger Artists‘ Group, Miya Studios, St Mary‘s Studio, and the Contemporary Art Society Queensland Branch provided critical forms of institutional support for artists. Brisbane‘s art world began to take shape in 1887 when the Queensland Art Society was founded, and in 1940, as the Royal Queensland Art Society, it was still providing guidance for a small art world struggling to define itself within the wider network of Australian art.
    [Show full text]